Current Affairs Quiz - April 2022

Notes:
The Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) held its maiden Maritime Exercise 2022 (IMEX-22) at Goa and in Arabian Sea.
22 Observers from 15 IONS member navies, including Australia, Bangladesh, France, India, Sri Lanka, UAE and UK among others also participated in the exercise. IMEX – 22 was conducted in two phases with Harbour Phase at Mormugao Port, Goa from followed by a Sea Phase in the Arabian Sea.

Notes:
US President Joe Biden signed the “Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act” into law, as he made lynching a federal hate crime.
As many as 4,743 persons were lynched between 1882 and 1968, with 3,446 of them being Black. This act was named after the murder of a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago by a group of White men in Mississippi in 1955 as he was alleged to have whistled at a White woman.

Notes:
The government has decided to maintain the status quo on interest rates of small savings instruments for the April-June quarter.
The interest rate of the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana is 7.6 per cent while the Public Provident Fund (PPF) fetches 7.1 per cent. Interest rates on small saving schemes are reset on a quarterly basis, tracking the movement in benchmark government bonds.

Notes:
The Gujarat government’s Bill which seeks to regulate stray cattle in urban areas of the state was passed by majority in the Assembly.
The Gujarat Cattle Control (Keeping and Moving) in Urban Areas Bill, 2022 mentions the threat stray cattle pose to those riding two-wheelers. The new Bill, when it becomes a law, will be applicable in Gujarat’s eight major cities – Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Gandhinagar, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar and Junagadh.

Notes:
The ‘International Day for Mine Awareness’ is observed annually on April 4, across the world. The mine action community, headed by the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) launches activities to create awareness on Mines.
This year, the theme of International Mine Awareness Day stands for “Safe Ground, Safe Steps, Safe Home”.

Notes:
The National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) has indigenously developed six new and rare Reference Materials (RMs).
It is the purest form of chemical required for anti-doping analysis in all WADA-accredited Laboratories across the world. They have been developed by NDTL in association with the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER)-Guwahati and the CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM), Jammu.

Notes:
Afghanistan is the the world’s biggest opium producer, at present. Recently, the Taliban announced a ban on the cultivation of poppy in Afghanistan.
The production, use or transportation of other narcotics was also banned. As per the United Nations estimates, Afghanistan’s opium production was worth USD 1.4 billion in 2017. It has been continuously increasing in recent months.

Notes:
Union Minister for Science and Technology Dr Jitendra Singh launched the “Mission Integrated Bio-refineries”, to accelerate innovation for renewable fuels, and chemicals for a low-carbon future.
It is a PPP (Public Private Participation) model initiative for ‘Clean Energy’. The scheme was soft launched by Dr Jitendra Singh in November 2021 at the COP26 side event at the Mission Innovation Annual Gathering.

Notes:
Punjab National Bank has recently made the Positive Pay System (PPS) compulsory for cheque payments worth Rs 10 lakh and above.
Under the Positive Pay System (PPS) developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a customer issuing the high-value cheque has to reconfirm some essential details before clearing. It aims to protect the customers from security threats

Notes:
The 2022 update of the World Health Organization’s air quality database highlights that 99 per cent of the world population breathes air that exceeds WHO air quality limits.
The update also introduces ground measurements of annual mean concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is a common urban pollutant. As of now, over 6,000 cities in 117 countries are monitoring air quality.